10 Years for the price of 5... Meraki WiFi

[Nausing]

Hi all,

 

We're being offered 10 years for the cost of 5 years for our Meraki WiFi license.

 

With the cost savings it means if we keep the service for 3 years or more, we're saving money.

 

My concern is the change in technology with WiFi over the next 3 years and if I'm buying into a service I would want to change next year or the year after.

 

Have there been any significant changes to WiFi technology lately?

Thanks.

[Norphy]

The last big one was 802.11ac which started appearing about 2,3 years ago. However, generally speaking, devices are forwardly and backwardly compatible. I doubt that any device released in the next five years will have any trouble connecting to a current 802.11ac access point.

[psydii]

There is nothing on the horizon that will reasonably displace ac wave 2 for enterprise deployments in the next five years. So buy now keep for ten, and you will only be a few years behind the curve at the end of the process.

 

Our N network is 8 years old.

 

Modern .ac wave 2 enterprise kit is good. Look at 3x3 or 4x4 for maximum capacity / future proofing. They will have the best aerial and cpus/ram, as well as the best throughout for large numbers of 1x1 2x2 clients, because over the lifetime of the kit you will end up with mainly mu-mino capable clients.

 

Word of caution, I haven't yet seen a bake off of mu-mimo APs or clients, so I'd get a vendor to set up a proving ground before splashing on the higher/est end kit.

[Arthur]

We're being offered 10 years for the cost of 5 years for our Meraki WiFi license.

Depending upon which Meraki APs you are looking to buy it could either be a good deal or a bad deal.

 

https://meraki.cisco.com/support/#policies

 

Cisco Meraki typically provides support for a given product for a period of seven (7) years after the EOS date.

 

Have there been any significant changes to WiFi technology lately?

There's 802.11ad, 802.11af, 802.11ah and 802.11ax (the successor to 'ac'), but realistically 802.11ac wave 2 access points are going to be fine for the next 5-8 years.

 

My school is currently replacing our 5 year old 802.11n APs and controller with 802.11ac APs, but that's mainly due to the vendor no longer supporting some of the access points. We could have got a couple more years out the system otherwise.

[AlanD]

My school is currently replacing our 5 year old 802.11n APs and controller with 802.11ac APs, but that's mainly due to the vendor no longer supporting some of the access points. We could have got a couple more years out the system otherwise.

 

In dense deployments such as classroom blocks with tens of connections per access point 'ac' offers few advantages because you can't use wider channels effectively in those conditions. Basically you are stuck using 40MHz channels which 'n' does well.

 

Multiple streams and mu-mimo give some benefits ...typically up to around X1.5 depending on getting really strong signals from APs in each class room to provide spatial separation...and you may not have those signal strengths if you have to turn down the power to reduce the size of the collision domain and co-channel interference.

 

So yes , generally it's not worth changing from n to ac.

 

Personally I thing the annual charges for cloud managed AP solutions...even at 10 for price of 5 is still staggeringly high, especially when there are other proven APs which are really good with no such on going costs.

[psydii]

Modern ac over 5-7 year old a/g/n is like night and day when used with ac clients.

 

Yes when that are all trying shunt 100's of MBytes you won't see much difference from n, but most of the time the increase in speed out paces the users' ability to make simultaneous requests, and so people see 300-900 mbit/sec when saving/downloading a file or two. Login/profile roaming/big av/windows updates have a tendency to land at the same time, so you may well be back to N performance there. But for the end user it feels a lot faster while they are getting work done.

 

From a purely financial point of view, if you run a tender, are the Aruba/Aerohive/etc 5 year offers less than half the Meraki ten year cost?

[AlanD]

.....and so people see 300-900 mbit/sec when saving/downloading a file or two.

 

In your dreams....I'd very (but pleasantly) surprised - and happy if an "ac" access point and clients managed even 250Mb/s of actual successful data transmission - to a browser, fileloading, or loading a domain profile. Yes instantaneous transmission rates will be higher...but not successful reception rates which are figures that should be quoted. Put 10 laptops in a loop with some script loading a file and printing out data per second at end of each file loaded....and you will see figures of 20Mb/s on each laptop or less even when using an 80MHz channel. If you use a 160MHz channel....well you won't be using a 160MHz channel unless you are home - complete waste of time and often not supported by enterprise Access points anyhow. Only the people selling them and gullible purchasers believe otherwise.

 

I'm not saying "ac" doesn't give some benefits - it does clearly...but they are benefits that will be seen only by getting out your stop watch, because in practice to users it won't feel any different to using "n" kit.

[Max_Power]

Offer is only valid until the end of July.

 

We placed an order to expand our Meraki system and got the 10 year agreement for the price of 5. They offered us 10 year licences on the APs we were buying, or the option to even out all the licences to existing and new kit which would have been 7 year licence per AP.

 

Another WiFi manufacturer has a similar offer on but cant remember which one it is - want to say HP but cant find the material on it now. Apparently this is why Meraki have done the offer to counteract the other company.

[Sylv3r]

We've always bought our Meraki kit on the 10 years for the price of 5 deals, I would hope that we would be looking to upgrade / renew our AP's within the space of 10 years as technology changes.

[Wave9_Andy]

Good morning all

 

The 10 year for 5 (+ extra 1 year free) was an Education only offer that expires at the end of Cisco's financial year (31.7.17). I am pretty certain there will be a replacement offer for schools this coming year that's attractive but not sure what that will look like yet.

 

In practice if you are adding devices to an existing Meraki network or you are adding devices in the future and purchasing a shorter licence period then the way the licensing works, by pooling licences to always have a co terminus end date, might well mean that your actual renewal date is shortened from 11 years, and is more in line with the typical lifecycle of networking equipment. Your end date is always available to yo in the organisation section of the dashboard.

 

As a Meraki MSP (and an Edugeek sponsor!), we would be happy to answer any questions you have on licensing or Meraki products in general, but there's some good info here

 

https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Licensing/Licensing_FAQ

 

Cheers

 

Andy

Edited July 27, 2017 by Wave9_Andy

[geezersoft]

Ths is definitely the cheapest way to license Meraki. What you need to check is the AP end of life.

 

https://meraki.cisco.com/support/#policies

 

For example I started off using MR16s that I Purchased back in November 2012. The product End of sale was 31st May 2014 and end of Support 31st May 2021. So depending on The EOL and ES it possible to use then device for about 10years from new.

 

We have over 200 Meraki APs onsite, but integrating them with the firewall has caused such problems that we are now looking to replace them all a great expense.

 

So if you want to use 802.1x authentication on your SSID and use Radius Accounting to integrate with your firewalls DO NOT BUY MERAKI !!!!!!!!!!!

[PotNoodleTech]

Personally I steer all lease contracts away from 7-10 year and down to 3-5 year (preferably 3years)

 

Anything higher than 3 year is inflexible and has caused problems in the past with "we need to do this but we can't as we still have x years on the contract and we can't afford to buy it out".

 

I also have to question the value for money of the product if it is able to be discounted by 50% / 5 years.

 

The entire aim of these kind of offers is to get you hooked in to a long term lease to reduce your ability to shop around for best value in the future. Be careful. The main issue with 5 year old wireless is not the technology but the number of access points. 5 years ago I bought 45 APs outright - now I really need more like 100AP's to cover future growth. If I was stuck in a contract for a further 5 years I would be disappointed/annoyed.

 

Just my 2p.

[Max_Power]

Its not a lease? You buy the 5 year licence as a one off cost along with the AP and then just get another 5 years free. No yearly payments or subscriptions.

Don't anticipate changing my wireless every few years, due to scale and cost. If after 6 years we decide to ditch it for newer technology (if there is new technology in 6 years) we haven't lost out but gained a years usage at no cost.